‘Black hat’ is an old-fashioned term that comes from the early days of movies, particularly westerns. The guy in the black hat is the bad guy, taking advantage of the weak or naive, and doing his best to foil the hero in the white hat. This is quite a dramatic picture. It certainly doesn’t seem to fit in with the general idea of those working in computers.

The term ‘black hat’ has been used in relation to a lot of ‘bad guy’ techniques used on the internet, including hackers and spammers. When it comes to search engine optimisation, a black hat is someone who takes advantage of SEO techniques illegitimately. This often ends in the creation of spammy content. Unlike the movies, it can be hard to spot the bad guys in SEO and just as hard for an outsider to spot a black hat technique.

Some sites are openly dedicated to black hat techniques. The world of computers has always been full of otherwise normal programmers who get their kicks from the challenge of bucking the system, and SEO is no different. Once site’s tag line is ‘let your greed meet your imagination.’
Black hat bloggers often revel in their cartoon villain status.

Such light-hearted attitudes to the concepts of black hat and white hat SEO hide the dark reality. Black hat SEO experts can do a business a lot of damage. They also wreck the enjoyment of the net for the rest of us.

The difficulty with black hat SEO operators is that they often bend the rules, rather than outright defrauding their customers. The devil is in the detail. Often, black hats promise outrageously good results. They follow through with them, too. Around a month later, however, the site they were implemented on has disappeared from the search indexes, and its owners are wondering what on earth they can do to fix it.

Much of black hat SEO was once absolutely fine. Then people overdid it. For instance, the placement and number of keywords is largely up to an individual site. However, due to keyword stuffing, the number of keywords on your page has to be monitored.

Why avoid black hat SEO? Mainly, because you value your customers. Black hat SEO techniques do not add value to your website. You will be penalised by the search engines because they do not add value to your website. In the end, it’s all about your site users, which is just as it should be.

Recovering from black hat search engine optimisation techniques can take time, but it can be done. The first thing to do is track down all of the offending techniques and fix them. Then you can approach the search engines for re-inclusion and work on getting your ranking back. It can be hard to spot exactly what a black hat SEO company has done to your site, and often it’s best to call in some experts. Talk to us at SEO Consult if you have had a brush with the black hats to see how we can help.

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